As kids and young adults graduate from high school and college, they breathe a sigh of relief when finals are finished. No more tests for a while...or ever! But, while academic testing may be over for a brief time or for good, few of us realized as students that being tested really never ends.
No one told me. No finals means there is never a final test in life. What a surprise!
Life itself tests us all the time.
I find that whatever test I want least is the most frequent to appear. Whenever there is a lesson to learn that we don't want to learn, it reappears until we do learn it. And each time we avoid learning a lesson ensures that the next test will be more difficult than the last.
Ask anyone with a sweet tooth, for instance, if it is possible to eat just a little dessert. When finding that sweets put on weight, the brightest among us curb their sweet tooth. But those who do not learn that lesson will continue until too many sweets bring on a big tummy or a tummy ache. Ignoring that lesson can ratchet up to diabetes and beyond. Everyone can relate to these food tests resulting in lifestyle and health consequences.
Other tests sometimes escape our notice, regardless of how devastating the life lessons. A failed marriage often precedes another attempt where a partner is taken who is similar to the first (or second or third) in terms of posing a lesson to be learned. Although each situation is more difficult than the previous, it is astonishing how many people miss the lesson altogether, dooming themselves to yet a more difficult test!
Fortunately, there are also people everyday for whom the light bulb goes on. I've seen a number of friends make mistakes in selecting love mates who were all wrong but recognized the lesson in time to make a better decision, if not right away, at least eventually.
Whenever there is a lesson to learn
that we don't want to learn, it reappears until we do learn it. And each
time we avoid learning a lesson ensures that the next test
will be more difficult than the last.
Maybe knowing this will be encouraging: Wanting to be aware and having the courage to make a choice are really much easier than pretending all is well when it is not. Remember, the tests, and therefore the choices, get harder until we learn the lesson.
Tests are just the doors to happiness and fulfillment. It is actually a good thing that they are not going away until they are solved. Eventually we realize there are no finals and come to embrace the tests. They are no longer simply academic to advance us to a higher grade. They are lifelong life lessons to lead us to an ever more enriching life.
Jean Loxley-Barnard has been a writer all her life and studied both sociology and psychology at George Washington University where she earned a B.A. Her company, The Shopper, Inc., encompasses all the Loxley-Barnard family publications - The Shopper Magazines and Doctor to Doctor Magazine. She has been in the advertising, consulting and publishing business for 39 years.